The Giro Rosa has finished for 2017 but we’re far from done with it. With great racing every day, it’s perhaps best summed up by Neal Rogers talking about Lucinda Brand when he said: “Only thing more badass than “no one in the photo”? No one in the photo with blood trickling down your arm”. Sarah and Dan recap the biggest stage race on the calendar and all of the highs and lows the second week of racing brought us. After that they continue with the overview on the Tour de Feminin in Poland before wrapping up with some quick results in other disciplines and a glimpse of the calendar ahead, and in 2018. (1:00:00 MIN / 54.94 MB)

This week’s women’s cycling links and videos

The biggest women’s cycling stage race, the only women’s Grand Tour. Catch up with our podcast about stages 1-6, including links to the posts of each stage’s videos, photos and media. And for the rest of the race:

If you want to find out a bit more about some of the people who make the media that help us follow the race, Sarah’s podcast interviews with Rose Manley, who makes the videos on the UCI YouTube, and with Vélofocus, aka Sean Robinson and Balint Hamvas, who take the amazing photos.

Stage 8 was called the Queen Stage of this year’s Giro Rosa, which might look odd, as it only had a Cat 2 climb. But each year the Giro likes to vary the race, so we have editions full of Mountain Top Finishes, some with famous climbs followed by huge descents, and some, like this, without as many mountains.

But it was still a very tough stage, made harder by another day of burning heat. Tatiana Riabchenko had attacked and was out solo, chased by Anouska Koster, who was joined by Janneke Ensing, and then Lucinda Brand. Brand attacked towards the top, and set out to chase down Riabchenko, while behind these chasers, a group with the General Classification leaders attacked each other.

Brand is one of the best descenders in the peloton (remember her amazing descending to win Stage 7 of the 2017 race?) and she caught Riabchenko, but then, in the last 10km, she crashed… would Riabchenko make it to the finish alone? Would the chasers catch all the escapees? It was drama right to the line.

This week we preview all the stages of the 2017 Giro Rosa, from the Team Time Trial all the way through to the climb of Mount Vesuvius. There’s stages to suit the sprinters, the puncheurs, the roleurs and the climbers. Who is suited to each stage? Which teams have the strongest rosters? Who are the riders to watch? How is the race likely to unfold? We answer all of these questions and more. We even unlock the age-old secret of how to interpret the race book (It’s Idiosyncratic, Unless It’s the Exact Opposite). (50.05 MIN / 45.86 MB)

This week marks the beginning of the Ovo Energy Women’s Tour, the United Kingdom’s best known (only) women’s UCI stage race. We run through a full preview of each stage, the riders that are likely to do well and the teams who have very clearly come prepared for this year’s contest. Following that we also take a quick look at the recent downhill mountain bike event at Fort William, with a bit of a surprise result. (52.14 MIN / 47.77 MB)

How to watch the OVO Energy Women’s Tour, 7-11th June 2017

The race stage information is on the excellent race website, including the start times. The UK is in he BST timezone, one hour behind European CEST and 9 hours behind Australian AEST, and 5 hours ahead of USA EDT. So if a stage starts at 11am BST, that’s 12:00 CEST, 8pm AEST and 6am EDT.

Watch the TV highlights every day on Eurosport at 10:25pm and 11pm on ITV4, except for Stage 4 on Saturday 10th June, when the ITV4 highlights are at 8pm. 11pm UK BST is 00:00 Euro CEST, 6pm USA EDT and 8am the next day Australian AEST, and if you’re not in the UK, can’t see ITV4 via a VPN, you can access the channel on filmon.com. Highlights are repeated the next day at various times – more information here.

Play the OVO Women’s Tour Virtual DS game – pick your team by 11am BST on 7th June!

Follow me on twitter to see the things I like from the race, and my own updates – and I’ll put up daily posts here with stage video, media and more, including each #RiderResults rider…. which reminds me…

Join in the Look Mum No Hands! daily #RiderResults game

Every day, excellent London cycling café chain Look Mum No Hands! will be offering prizes in their #RiderResults competition. I’ll be picking a rider for every stage, and telling you a bit more about them, and you need to tell Look Mum where you think they’ll place in that particular stage, on their fantastic twitter, with the #RiderResults hashtag – if you’re right and they pick your name out of their hat, you’ll win something great from their shop (which you should check out, there are gorgeous things). The cutoff point is 5km to go in each stage.

For Stage 1, I’m picking Marianne Vos, who has the most interesting race history. In the first year, she won 3 stages and the overall GC; in 2015, she couldn’t race as she was having injury issues, but presented the TV highlights (I interviewed her about that here); then last year, she “only” won one stage and came 4th in the GC.

This year she had a great cyclocross mini-season, winning the first race of the year on New Year’s Day, and coming second in the most thrilling World Championships we’ve ever seen – but her Spring Classics were disappointing to her, and her best result was 7th in Ronde van Drenthe WorldTour race, as she was injured again. She was especially disappointed to miss two of the first ever women’s Ardennes Week races, especially Amstel Gold. She seems to be feeling better in May, winning a couple of smaller day races, and then winning Gooik-Geraardsbergen-Gooik in a classic, exhilarating Vos style. But is she back?

In her time, she’s won, well…..practically everything! Olympic golds on the track and road, and 13 World Championships across road, track and CX. But more than that, she lives for cycling, and loves it passionately. She has run her own team for years – this year as WM3 Procycling – and the scariest thing about her is that as good as she is at winning, she’ll also work her heart out for her team-mates as well, as in the Rio Olympics.

Fans are desperate to see her back on top – but is she? Where do YOU think she’ll finish Stage 1?

This week we revisit all of the excitement from the Women’s World Tour at the Ronde van Drenthe. There’s more great racing from Drentse 8 and Setmarna Ciclista Valenciana. On top of this we have several really good articles about ways to improve women’s cycling to discuss and there’s been some interesting news in regards to British Cycling, and Jeannie Longo’s husband Patrice Ciprelli. Of course we can’t finish on a downer so we also take note of some of the fun stuff we’ve seen around the web this week. As always, heaps of links and videos in the post on the website!

This week we celebrate our vindication for having such lofty expectations of Strade Bianche. It was such an exciting and gripping race with one of the most exciting finales we’ve seen in recent years. Once we’re done recapping that (it takes a while)we take a look ahead at the Ronde van Drenthe, and then we get into an interesting and maybe controversial proposal for a new race series. (1:36:58 MIN / 88.79 MB)

This week we catch up on the opening races of the classics season. The Omloops (het Nieuwsblad and van het Hageland aka Tielt-Winge), and Le Samyn des Dames. It’s been a great opening to European racing with diverse pelotons and results! There’s a lot to unpack and enjoy, there’s also track racing to catch up on and some other news from around the traps. Remember to park for a clean getaway and then settle in for a hell of a listen. (1:32:02 MIN / 84.26 MB)